Breaking Down Appalachian Stereotypes: How a Charity Episode of American Idol Turned Me Into a Media Scholar
As a kid, I spent a lot of time in my dad’s pickup truck.
Every Saturday, he’d load me and my friends up in his Ford F-150 and take us on a tour of Central Appalachia. It was important that we understood where we came from, he said. We covered a lot of ground: By the time I was 18, I had been to just about every coal camp in Eastern Kentucky, traveled 1,000 feet beneath the earth in a coal mine, and paddled a kayak through most of the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River which runs through our part of the state. And as we drove, he told stories about our place. Stories about family members long past who had once lived in this holler. Stories about the river, which was both a means of travel and commerce and the cause of frequent flooding in the region. Stories about the rise and fall of coal camps, the boom and bust cycles which created lively communities that became all but deserted once the jobs were gone.
I noticed stories in other parts of my life, too. My Granny told them as she strung beans out on the porch and pulled cast iron skillets full of biscuits out of the oven. My great uncle Ed, who I always knew as Bub, leaned his head out the side of his truck to tell them while he idled in the driveway. And family dinners were full of them, the dining room ringing in a symphony of words and laughter as aunts, uncles and cousins swapped stories from their childhood. It became clear to me at a young age that stories were how we learned about and connected with each other. They were a source of joy, remembrance, wisdom, and humor.
But as I grew up, I realized that stories can have a dark side - especially when they’re used against you.
Elon Justice
I was 13 years old the first time I saw Appalachian life represented on TV. Like most kids in the 2000s, I was a big fan of American Idol and tuned in religiously each week. And during the show’s special charity episode in 2008, I watched as teen pop icon Miley Cyrus narrated a segment I would later know to label as poverty porn.
The three-minute package follows Miley being driven through Clay County, Kentucky, alongside her dad Billy Ray, who implies that he grew up in the area. (A quick Google search will tell you that Billy Ray Cyrus actually grew up in Greenup County, three hours north.) A melancholy song begins playing as the pair is driven deep into a holler, while Miley explains that most kids in this area grow up “without the services and conveniences we all take for granted.” Miley and Billy Ray stop at a single-wide trailer to meet the Henson family, a couple with three kids who “live in very difficult conditions.” An interview with the matriarch of the Henson family reveals that her dream is for her kids to escape the area so they can get an education and “make something of theirselves.” Thankfully, the kids have been enrolled in a Save the Children after-school program, which grants them assistance with their reading and computer skills and brings books right to their door. It is this organization, headquartered in London, England, which can lift the Appalachian children out of poverty and allow them to make something of themselves.
When the segment ended, I remembered being baffled by what I had just watched. I had seen enough of Eastern Kentucky to know that poverty was undoubtedly real. But to see the place I loved displayed before the nation as victims of our own making, unable to save ourselves, felt like a kick in the gut. All my exposure to and education about Appalachia didn’t shy away from the reality of poverty, but it didn’t shame anyone about it, either. Good jobs were scarce and the economy was tough, but I had heard more about the resilience and creativity of Appalachian people to make do than I had ever heard about wanting to be saved by someone else. The place and people that I and so many others took pride in had been publicly reduced to a hopeless case.
Unfortunately, I realized fairly quickly that this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for Appalachia. Mainstream media that mentioned the region was almost always negative. And as I got older, I could see the ways that representation was harmful to those around me. After all, you can only hear that you’re worthless so many times before a small part of you starts to believe it.
Despite my distaste for any mention of Appalachia in the media, I became drawn toward media as a career. I had always been a writer, and in high school I fell in love with directing and editing videos. I graduated from college with a degree in TV & Film Production and was shocked when I was accepted to the Master’s program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, far from all I had ever known in Kentucky.
It was in this program that I really began to reckon with how I had seen Appalachia represented in popular media throughout my life. More than that, I realized that with my credentials as both a maker and scholar of media, I had the power to really do something about it. So, in 2020, I launched The Appalachian Retelling Project, an online documentary initiative that shares stories about the life and people of Appalachia. And since most of the media I took issue with had come from a director who told a single story from their own perspective, I felt it critical that this was a project not just from my perspective, but from many people from many backgrounds throughout the region. So in addition to creating my own video and written content, I opened up submissions from absolutely anyone who had a story to tell. And I was blown away by the stories I received in response.
I share all of this as an introduction of sorts, as someone who has spent much of her life thinking deeply about media that has harmed the place I call home and who intends to spend the rest of it creating and sharing media that can, hopefully, help it. I’ll be contributing a number of articles over the coming weeks, and in each one I’d like to take a closer look at some of the most common stereotypes used to portray Appalachia in the media. In addition, I’ll be sharing stories told by myself and others that aim to refute those stereotypes. My hope is that by doing so, we can all become more aware of the real-life effects that media representation can have on communities and that we can work together to empower those who have been damaged in the process.
If I’ve learned anything from this work, it’s that stories are truly powerful. I hope that together, we can use that power for good.
